


Here With Me

by JaxStarGazer



Category: Midnight Poppy Land (Webcomic)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:34:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26451175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaxStarGazer/pseuds/JaxStarGazer
Summary: Tora spends his first night 'sleeping' with Poppy, but not where he planned.*Spoilers for last few fast pass episodes*
Relationships: Tora/Poppy Wilkes
Comments: 34
Kudos: 162





	Here With Me

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for recent fast pass episodes. 
> 
> Basically I just needed to declutter my brain and my baby was giving me bit more time than normal this evening. Please be gentle with me, never thought I'd write a Tora fic, short as it is.
> 
> All characters belong to Lilydusk

Here With Me -

I feel like I'm trying to fall asleep on fucking clouds. Each time I turn the damn mattress moulds around me trapping me to the bed. I'd given up long ago on spooning with, Bobby. Sub-consciously she'd moved away from me as soon as I started to move too much in her too small for me bed. I was trying not to disturb her, but I couldn't get comfortable. Princess would love this bed, but me . . . I wanted to get out of the body hole I'd created and plant myself on solid ground. I should want to wrap myself around Bobby, and hold her close to me. Fuck, I've wanted to do that all night! I thought I'd sleep like a baby the first time we slept in the same bed together.

The fuck if I am though.

I stared at the dark ceiling of her room, every sense on high alert to any trouble outside her apartment, out on the balcony, any signs of distress from the angel beside me. My hands clutched the comforter, twisting it in my fingers as my anxiety got higher and higher. I'd tried to just focus on Bobby's breathing, try and sync mine with hers so I could fall asleep easier. But I just ended up feeling like I was being starved of oxygen. I tried willing my body to relax from the top of my head to my feet, but that just made me tense up more thinking about how sunken into the bed I felt. I rolled on my front, my back, each side. One leg out, one on top of the covers. 

Might as well fucking face it, I'm not ready for this. I thought I was and I'm not. 

Another reason to fucking hate Vincent, I can't even share a bed with a beautiful woman who makes me want some kind of normal in my fucked-up world. It was a simple request from her, stay the night, sleep beside her. I can't give her a normal relationship publicly and now I can't even give her the comfort she wants unless I go without sleep all night. I need to be too damn aware of everything for that to happen. My body hummed for a cigarette between my lips, to take that deep drag and feel the knot in my chest loosen as I exhaled into the night.

But I won't do that either. 

Sighing, I turn my head and gaze at the floor near the window. I haven't told Bobby, but the second I stepped in her room I looked for the place I'd automatically lay down to go to sleep. And the bed wasn't it. All night I've been thinking about that space, where I knew I'd rest better the second my back hit the floor. But I've resisted looking at it until now. My eyes burning with fire from exhaustion, the need for sleep overriding the want to stay beside Bobby and just be close to her. 

Fuck it, if I don't leave the bed soon, she won't be sleeping much either with all my tossing and turning. 

Without making a sound I slipped out of bed and grabbed my pillow. Placing that on the floor gently I snuck back out to the living room and grabbed the blanket over the back of her couch. Fuck if I'm going to take her covers from her too. When I came back to her room she hadn't moved, not noticing my disappearance yet. Hopefully she won't, she'll sleep the whole night unaware and I'll wake before she does so, I can sneak back in as if I've never been gone. Pretty fucking unlikely, but I could hope.

With one last glance around the room I eased myself to the floor and stretched out on my side, the blanket just about covering me. But I didn't care about the slight chill this low to the ground. 'Cause as soon as I put my head on my pillow I 'relaxed'. I could feel the hard floor beneath me, solid and secure. Where I'd feel any vibrations of footsteps that shouldn't be there. Where I'd feel the breeze if the balcony doors were opened by anyone. Where a shift of light or shadow moving would wake me instantly knowing someone was here that shouldn't be. I wasn't exposed beneath the window, tucked against the wall. 

I felt like shit thinking like that while I've left Bobby asleep in her bed alone, the first person someone will see if they do get in. But down here I've better protection for her. I'll know someone's here long before her sub conscious will alert her to something being off. And by then the person will have already been taken down if I have anything to say about it. 

One hand resting across my chest, I finally gave in to the burn of my eyes and closed them, willing my brain to shut down enough that I could get some sleep. Hopefully not wake Bobby because of another fucking nightmare of the fucked-up life I've got. I still look at her and wonder how the fuck I let her get so close to me without her trying. How I've all but put a goddamn target on her head because of me. How I couldn't imagine never holding her small hand in mine just because I can. Or not look into her big brown eyes and see someone other than who I am staring back. Shit, I knew I was gone the second she punched me at Alice's, but I should've tried harder to keep her away from my world.

Now I'll do whatever I have to just to keep her in it.

I fell asleep to that promise to myself, listening to the lullaby of her deep even breathing from across the room.

\---

Something is tickling my nose. That was my first thought as I started to come through the levels of waking up on the floor of Bobby's room as quick as ever. I wasn't this warm when I fell asleep, was the second thought. My arms reflexively twitched as my body tensed preparing for action, feeling the soft curvy body of Bobby pressed against me, her head tucked under my chin, her fingers intertwined with mine where we were laying on her floor.

Poppy on the floor of her room . . .

When the fuck did that happen?

Blinking I looked around the room, not as dark as when I fell asleep, but not light enough to know we've skipped dawn and hit the morning either. When did she join me on the floor?! Why did she join me on the floor? Judging by her deep, gentle snore like breathing she was as crashed out with me here as she'd been in the bed where I left her, the comforter from the bed now covering us both. 

Well shit . . .

Blinking through the haze I pressed my nose to her hair, inhaling the sweet scent of her shampoo as I felt my body relax again. She knows I sleep on the floor or the couch of my own place. She doesn't know the reasons are much darker than because I feel safer down here, and she probably never will. She tried to hide it but I saw the sympathy in her eyes as she swept her gaze around my apartment the first time she was there, not missing a beat of the bare, cold space. But she didn't pry and I didn't offer much explanation either. But this was our first night sleeping 'together'. I know what goes through Bobby's mind, she'd hoped I'd be able to sleep soundly in her bed because I feel safe with her.

She's not wrong.

But the flashbacks, the bad dreams, the constant looking over my shoulder . . . That shit takes time to un-train, even if I am with someone who makes me want to shut that part of my life away anytime I'm with her. I want to give her the happy ever after she deserves. I want her to have all the good shit life has to offer her, with me along for the ride. But if she wants it with me it's going to take time and a fuck ton of patience and adapting to get there. One night isn't going to undo a lifetime of bullshit. 

But yet here she is. Asleep on the floor, resting here with me without me asking, without a complaint.

And if that doesn't make me the luckiest son of a bitch alive right now. 

I'll try again tomorrow and the next day and the next until I get it right.

For me and for Bobby.


End file.
